TALK | DIY Placemaking @ Homesickness School

Harbinger’s Linda Carroli will join the Homesickness School to discuss broad currents in placemaking, with reference to a diverse range of artistic, design and planning processes and practices. She will particularly reflect on the emergence of DIY urbanism and social engagement, drawing on examples and case studies including some she has presented as part of her Changescaping project. The presentation recognises that cultural development and engagement in the city is interdisciplinary, innovative and relational and has the potential to reshape civic arrangements in communities and cities.

The Homesickness Schoolis an incubator for participatory public art projects in Logan City that will be ‘inhabited’ by nine local artists with the convenors, Elizabeth Woods and Kevin Leong. Its objective is to create an optimal environment for the development and production of six temporary public art projects in Logan City, and to build a practical, self-propelling foundation for the production of future creative projects.

A list of resources and publications have been compiled for the participating artists. It’s such an interesting list, that it deserves to be shared.

I spy … scenes from micro-suburbia
This pamphlet by Linda Carroli & JM John Armstrong captures scenes from our locality which show some of the nuances and subtleties of suburban environments. While there has been a blossoming of engagement with DIY and tactical urbanism, it tends to overlook the complexity and difficulty of suburban contexts. It also tends to overlook the activity that is already part of the suburban environment. This project endeavours to present personal accounts and narratives as a counter to the sometimes anti-suburban tone of current design, planning and academic discourse. It presents small scale encounters that indicate the suburbs operate at multiple scales and offer a diverse palette of engagements and actions.http://issuu.com/lindacarroli/docs/i_spy_booklet

Changescaping
Changescaping by Linda Carroli aims to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments with a particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers. In part, that change is about how practice itself is understood. The publication seeks to profile and foreground work happening in the Australian context, as it can seem that Australians aren’t prominently featured in the discussions about DIY urbanism, urban interventions and the like. Changescaping also aims to think beyond categories like ‘DIY urbanism’ and ‘urban intervention’ as a way of potentiating and tracing new trajectories for planning, design and art in the urban environment, as well as cutting across typologies and disciplines.http://placing.wordpress.com/changescaping/

A Guidebook of Alternative Nows
This collaboratively developed book features 34 visionary creative thinkers and makers illuminating ways of devising more socially, economically, and ecologically just versions of now. Available for free download.http://joaap.org/press/alternativenows_hickey.htm

DIY Urbanism: Right to the City
Exhibition and project documentation. As part of the exhibition and symposium The Right to the City, we will be presenting a collection of realised and unrealised work that challenges the spatial politics of the City, namely Sydney, and use a bottom-up-approach to transforming urban spaces. We present artists, activists, planners and architects who are involved in “remaking” the city in more socially connected and sustainable ways, who use a do-it-yourself (or design-it-yourself) approach. The project presents an overview of the current urban condition – the concerns and issues that are bubbling away under the surface, and distinct from large-scale, commercial and spectacle-driven urban developments. Projects include micro-architectures, performative urban interventions, temporary installations and strategic design.http://issuu.com/magicbag85/docs/diyurbanism

Contact

Recent & Current involvements

Cultural & Public Art Strategies for urban, suburban & regional communities
Stakeholder engagement and partnership brokering for Indigenous led enterprise and economic development research project
Facilitation & workshops
Commissioned writing, research, editing and guest lecturing
Voluntary non profit board involvements with Art from the Margins and Dementia Friendly Communities Advisory Committee
Membership of the International Association of Public Participation and Institute of Place Management

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Respect

Harbinger Consultants respectfully acknowledge the past and present traditional owners of Australia and pay our respects to the leaders of the traditional custodians of this land. We are grateful to the Elders - Indigenous and non-indigenous - who so generously share their knowledges and wisdom with us.